Mass spectrometers are devices that may be used to identify amounts and types of a sample's chemical constituents by measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of the constituents when ionized. During a mass spectrometry analysis, a sample is ionized to produce molecular and/or elemental ions that are passed through a magnetic field. Ions with different mass-to-charge ratios will traverse different paths through the magnetic field, thereby allowing separation and measurement of each type of ion.
Mass isotopomers are molecules that have identical chemical and elemental compositions but contain different isotopes of their constituent elements and thereby have different masses. In some cases, there may be multiple mass isotopomers with the same mass that are different from one another because they have different positional arrangements of the same isotopes and/or different isotopic distributions. When a mass spectrometry analysis is performed that includes mass isotopomers, there may be present multiple different mass isotopomers having the same mass and/or unrelated chemical compounds that happen to have the same mass. Accordingly, some analyses of mass isotopomers via mass spectrometry may have trouble distinguishing one mass isotopomer from another and/or from other incidental compounds.